The Wise Childen story is about The twin Chance girls, musicians, performers, and the illegitimate daughters of the legendary Shakespearean actor Sir Melchior Hazard. The novel is set around the 75th birthday celebration of twins identical to each other Dora as well as Nora Chance.
In a coincidence, it’s Shakespeare’s birthday as well as the 100th birthday celebration of their father Sir Melchior Hazard as well as his brother Peregrine Hazard.
Wise Children is a novel that is based on contradictions. It draws on a rich variety of high and low culture – music hall, cinema and Hollywood, theatre and Shakespeare – and features central themes of doubling (or twinning), identity, fatherhood and legitimacy/illegitimacy.
It’s quick-paced humorous and enjoyable and as such is considered more accessible than her earlier works by Angela Carter; it is seen by many as an intriguing and subversive examination of British culture and identity.
Carter, Shakespeare and London
Carter lived a lot of her early and her later years in south London as well. Wise Children is a mourning for the lost days of Lyons tea houses, but as a celebration of the amazing linguistic diversity of London’s residents. The power of the metaphor comes by the geographic location and geography of London.
Wise Children will also serve as a book of opposites. Dora our protagonist starts her tale with a description of the rich/poor, north/south London divide.”Welcome on this side’ she writes: ‘the left side, the one that which tourists seldom see as well as the less pristine part of the old father Thames’ (p. 1).
This geographic polarity is in line with the distinctions between high and low society (music halls and Shakespeare) as well as legitimacy and legitimacy (the Chance twins and the Hazards).
Shakespeare as well as London are at the center of this novel which aptly begins and ends with the ’49 Bard Road, Brixton, London, South West Two’ (p. 1) The location of twins and the characters Nora as well as Dora Chance. As this Atlas shows, there’s an actual Shakespeare Road in Brixton, south London.
The critics have suggested it is possible that Angela Carter, who lived near Clapham could have taken the road as a source of inspiration of Her Bard Road (Shakespeare was often referred to as the Bard’).
Wise Children was Carter’s final work. She passed away in 1992, aged 52. It’s an appropriate tribute to her that there’s now an Angela Carter Close in Brixton.
Angela Carter’s Notebook
This notebook Angela Carter used to record ideas and research in the book Wise Children. It is divided into various sections, including “Hazards / High-Life + people Screen + stage The notebook shows Carter designing characters and plots from her research before she wrote a initial version of her novel.
In the notes there are also some longer prose pieces – basically the very first drafts from Wise Children.
Similar to the final novel it brings together the worlds of high and low for an engaging and often loud reading. Filled with intricate and rich detail, we witness Carter taking inspiration and ideas from a wide range of sources.
The material ranges from Max Reignhardt’s Hollywood production A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Walter Benjamin’s essay on ‘The The Art of Reproduction in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ as well as biography of Victorian Shakespearean actors and many stories about the world of the music hall and pantomime.
Wise
The thing that unites all of the materials is Carter’s enduring eye for the funny and the ridiculous and also for the fantastic and kitsch. A section of notes about World War Two irreverently details the escape of a zebra when London Zoo was bombed, and also tells tales of nightclubs in which it was claimed that the Army boots were damaging the dance floor’.
It’s particularly fascinating to observe how Carter weaves real, often bizarre tales into the novel, and amplifies the absurdity of carnivalesque events. In the page. 5r, for instance, Carter records how in 1936, the Stratford-upon-Avon Festival Company received a cable from Dallas, Texas, requesting an amount of earth from Shakespeare’s gardens as well as waters from the River Avon to consecrate a production.
The story of Wise Children, Sir Melchoir plans his Chance twins to bring the same sacred earth for his Hollywood production, but, in addition to many other comical problems, the earth is utilized for cat litter.
The process of drafting character and structure
Along with it contains information about research, this notebook also reveals the new design that is the basis of Wise Children and its characters.
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